Where Oh Where. . .

What are the journals that should that matter to a poet who is sending out poems from a first book? I could ask what are the journals that matter, and I think it would be a similar list, but I want to be strategic about this process. To keep inundating Poetry and The New Yorker with my brilliance will get old for me--and I'm sure it won't make the poor readers there any happier either. Will I, at some point, figure out how to get into Poetry? Sure, but hinging a first book on poems appearing there is just stupid.

I guess this question could also be... "If I care about my craft, if I feel like I'm doing things in my poetry that are interesting, graceful, fun, noteworthy, perhaps even innovative, something I want noticed by those I respect, where do I send my work?

I've torn apart my MFA manuscript and I'm rethinking the whole damn thing. I mean this as no slight to my committee who invested hours into reading my drafts. I mean this as no slight to my former self who, according to my crude calculations put 160-200 hours into it. (Hmm. Perhaps I should have put 400-440 hours into it?) The point is: it's just not working, as a project, any more for me. I don't want to send it out and hope that some press, some where will publish it. The concepts and practices guiding the creation of that book have become refined in the four years since I've graduated; I'm calmer now, less spastic about the creation/revision/assemblage of poems. I can see those spasms at work in that book, and they undercut what I wanted to do/what I want to do. So, there's a new manuscript underway now--not to jinx anything--and as it comes together I wonder where I should start sending the poems that, now, I'm more certain will be a part of it.

This manuscript is probably about six to seven months from being in the final stages, but several of its poems are complete. So, the next post will discuss some possible journals; I like reading the Gettysburg Review, The Sun Magazine, and Witness (though I haven't read it since it moved)--and 32 Poems, is that enough? Probably not. I'll address first book prizes and awards in a future post.